Oddities, musings and news from the health world

The vaccines-autism debate: on 'Dateline' this Sunday

August 27, 2009 | 4:46
pm

If you just can't get enough of the vaccines-cause-autism debate, check out "Dateline" this Sunday (Aug. 30), when NBC's Matt Lauer will interview Dr. Andrew Wakefield, whose 1998 medical study was
the first to suggest a possible link between the MMR vaccine and
autism.

That study, published in the Lancet, was later the subject of controversy, and in 2004, 10 of the paper's 13 authors retracted their names from the report. Wakefield stands by his data and some parents of children with autism are staunch supporters of his theory.

Also featured on the program will be two people with points of view very different to Wakefield's: Brian Deer, a British investigative journalist who wrote in the Sunday Times of London that Wakefield's data may have been falsified, and pediatrician/vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit, author of the book "Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure."